By far the most popular topic on this blog is material about rankings. People love to know who the best are and how they fare. This post is about optimizing one’s ranking within RePEc, and doing so in a way that does not trigger our safeguards against cheating. It turns out all the following points are points we actually want to encourage anyway so as to improve the quality of the data collected in RePEc.
As an author, here is what you can do once you logged into the RePEc Author Service:
- Make sure all your works listed in RePEc are actually in your profile. Thus, do not remove from your profile working papers that have been published. Some working paper series have higher impact factors than many journals, and working papers are much more downloaded than articles. In addition, if all versions are in your profile, we can link between them. (If you previously refused items that were yours, you can recuperate them by clicking on the “refused” tab in your research page, unrefuse the relevant items, and then redo the search)
- Make sure the name variations listed in your profile really encompass all possible ways a publisher may have listed your name. The automatic search is only going to find works with such names.
- There may be additional citations waiting for your approval. These are those for which we have less confidence that they pertain to the right work. Click on the “citation” tab in your author account.
- Link to your profile on EconPapers or IDEAS from your homepage or email signature.
- When refering to your works on a web page, put the link to EconPapers or IDEAS. We cannot count downloads that do not transit through RePEc services.
- Make sure all your works are listed on RePEc. For the missing ones, encourage the publisher to list them, or get your department to open a working paper series, or upload your works on the Munich Personal RePEc Archive.
As an institution, you can optimize your ranking by making sure your registered authors follow the advice from above and:
- Make sure everyone is registered and maintains his/her profile.
- Make sure everyone gives the proper affiliation. You can check who is listed with you by finding your institution on EDIRC.
- Have your working paper series listed on RePEc. Instructions are here.
If everyone optimizes like this, RePEc data will be more complete, current and useful. Help us make it better!
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